Fundamentals of Drawing Still Life

over into the area of landscape. However, I think they can still be classified as still life because they are in enough detail to make the objects the subject of the picture rather than the suggestion of larger spaces.

Varying Techniques and Materials H ERE WE COME TO A SECTION WHICH IS ALL about looking at the various techniques that we can use to produce our still-life drawing. Obviously, the still-life composition can be drawn with anything, but sometimes a particular type of arrangement comes across as more interesting drawn in one medium than another. Not only that, you may also use a different technique when handling the medium, which will also add to the final effect. This is a trial and error situation, because it is not possible to know for sure which technique and medium will work the best until you have tried them out. When you have more experience, you will have a better feel for which technique will enhance the still life you have in mind. There is no substitute for experience in this respect, because even if theoretically you know which way of drawing is supposed to be the best in a particular situation, your own expertise has a lot to do with the final result, and you may be more proficient in one than another. So go ahead and experiment; try out as many new ways

of drawing as you can discover, and you may be even lucky enough to come up with a completely new method that hasn’t been found before. This is perhaps a bit unlikely, since there has been so much done in art in the past five thousand years, but nevertheless there is always a possibility. Keep an open mind as to how you should work. So we shall proceed through all the well-known methods, looking at some of the varieties of ways of working that are available even within just one technique. Try each at least once to see if they interest you enough for you to persevere and master them. We shall look at drawing in pencil, in ink and in chalk, as well as using a brush and tonal wash of ink or paint. We shall also try putting several methods together as mixed media. Although there are tried and tested ways of doing all this drawing, there are no rules that cannot be broken by the adventurous artist. This often is the way that you learn. You will find that the process of using different materials and techniques will first of all be very interesting, and secondly will ensure that you have some experience of these methods, which is where you begin to find your own favourite ways of drawing. I found that when I was learning to draw and paint I would get very hung up on a particular way of drawing for some length of time, which made me quite expert in it. Having learnt to use a certain technique or material well, you can then go on to see how another method may work and the experience you have already had will help you to experiment anew. PENCIL DRAWING The first thing we look at is the basic use of pencil to produce your still-life drawing. A drawing can function in several ways: as a sketch that acts as a preliminary stage for a painting, as an underdrawing on top of which you then put colour, as a finished piece in itself, or just as a piece of information to use for later work.

To start with, try out this loose-line technique, in which there is very little in the way of careful tone or sometimes none at all. The questing, wobbling line, which almost looks as though the point of the pencil never leaves the paper, is a very expressive medium for quickly and elegantly stating the form of the objects it is describing.

Notice how the line varies from one side of an object to the other, sometimes heavy and bold, sometimes slight and varying. To help this transition in definition you have to hold the pencil loosely as shown, more like a wand than a fountain pen. This of course takes a bit of practice but it is amazing how quickly the method can be mastered.

Shown here is the more careful and deliberate method of drawing quite fine and precise outlines and then carefully shading in the tone until it graduates from dark to light with great subtlety. For this method, the pencil has to be kept finely sharpened at the start, but allowed to become softly blunt when shading.

The graduation of tone can be further enhanced by the use of a stump (a rolled, pressed, solid paper stick with a pointed end) which smudges the pencil from heavy to faint shading very effectively.

Another, even more classical approach, is to draw similar clear, sharp outlines and then use a diagonal hatching system of closely drawn lines which build up large areas of tone very effectively and which, with just a change in pressure increase the depth of tone. Leonardo da Vinci was a great exponent of this system of hatching, which he apparently did with great speed and precision. It may take you a bit longer than him and you may not have his brilliant control of the pencil, but you will learn by practice. The hatched lines are drawn only in one direction, and the results are very attractive. PEN AND INK Now we move on to pen and ink. There are many types of pen that you can use. The techno graphic pens with fine fibre tips produce lines of uniform thickness and weight. If you use these you will sometimes need more than one calibre, or thickness. Then there is a range of fine-pointed nibs available that are pushed into an ordinary dip pen holder. Some of these are pointed and rigid, while others are flexible to allow variations in thickness of line. They tend to have a few more variable lines than the techno graphic pens. You can also vary the kind of ink you use with them to get a blacker or greyer tone.

First, with a pen, try the loose-line technique similar to that of the pencil technique shown on page 126. Use a large nib to begin with and draw with large, flowing gestures. You won’t create much tone with this but it does produce a lively looking line, which can be very attractive as long as the subject matter is not too detailed.

The same approach with a finer nib demands a more tightly controlled scribble effect, which can build up very varied tonal areas, helping to produce more depth and substance in the drawing. Always keep the strokes smaller with a fine pen, because it is the build-up of tiny wavering marks that produces an attractive quality to the drawing.

You can use a much more carefully organized system of hatching with multiple hatching, layered to build up significant areas of darker tone. This demands more precision in the outline shapes and you need to control the way the pen strokes butt onto these finely drawn outlines. Carried out with patience and perseverance, this can produce beautiful velvety textures that seem to create real depth and solidity. BRUSH AND WASH Drawing with a brush is a very pleasant experience once you have become accustomed to the flexibility of it. This technique has been used brilliantly by artists over the centuries, including Rembrandt and Picasso. Try varying the intensity of the ink or paint by diluting it with different amounts of water. Hold the brush firmly but flexibly so that it can flow freely along the shape you require. Allow the tip of the brush to push further onto the paper and then pull it off to make thinner, fainter lines. It produces a very attractive

look to a drawing. Try drawing volumes and larger shapes without drawing in pencil first, so that you get a fresh-looking shape of watery tone. Don’t worry too much about small mistakes; go for the overall effect. It can look very juicy, if sometimes a bit hit and miss. Note the variable softness of the lines, which are watery and fluid. Here the full flood of tone, which can’t be entirely controlled, gives a very rounded look to the pear. On the grapes, leave areas of highlight to

emphasize their juicy fullness. Don’t worry about the outline too much; just do your best. You can make a very fine pencil outline of your objects first and then proceed to lay layer upon layer of watery tones to get a carefully graduated set of shadows from black to very pale grey. When you employ this technique, try to avoid large areas of one tone unless you are using a good watercolour paper, which makes it easier.

Use a large, soft brush (the sable ones are the best) for the larger areas and a slim, pointed brush to draw finer areas and details. CHALK, CONTE AND PASTEL The method used for chalk is quite varied and also depends upon the quality of the chalk. Some are quite hard and wear down slowly; others are very soft or crumbly. They demand slightly different handling, so try a variety of them to discover which type you prefer to work with. The easiest way to use chalk or pastel is on a tinted paper, especially one that has a slightly rough or matt surface; a smooth surface refuses the chalk sometimes, so paper with some texture produces a better quality of line. You will be able to buy some good papers for these media from your local art shop.

You can take the classical method (similar in some respects to the pencil technique) of building up your picture with layers of hatched chalk lines, all in the same direction, which creates areas of uniform and variable tone to describe the form of the objects on show. Here you have to be very careful not to smudge the lines, because their effectiveness depends on their beauty of gradation from one tone to the next. Nothing is left to chance in this method, and it has to be carefully planned to get the well-tempered effect. Two shades of tone go a long way to help make this still life work, but don’t use white chalk here, where the paper is white. You must allow the white of the paper highlights to show or you will lose half the brilliance.

This still life is on tinted paper in a dark and a white chalk. The paper produces the half tones, the dark chalk the deeper shadows and outlines and the white chalk the highlights and bright spots. It is a very effective method, with economical amounts of drawing to be done; you let the tone of the paper do the work, with you just putting in the more extreme shadows and highlights. You will probably have to fix the final result with a good fixative spray, available from any art shop.

Use the chalk as shown, very lightly stroking the surface of the paper. A carefully sharpened end will give you finer lines. Never apply heavy pressure, which will always give a coarse effect. MIXED MEDIA As the name implies, this can mean all the previous methods described, plus the use of paper shapes to glue down onto the picture as well. This method lends itself very much to decorative approaches to art. You can cut out some shapes and tear out others to vary the interest in the way they are produced. The cutout shapes look elegantly sharp, while the torn shapes give a more rough-hewn appearance to the picture.



In the example on the facing page, the back of the sideboard is shown in three layers of cut-out mid-tone paper, with several cut-out shapes in paler paper stuck on top of the background shapes. The smaller items on the dresser are drawn simply and decoratively in lines of fibre pen ink or soft chalk shapes. EXAMPLES FROM ART

Now we will look at examples by well-known artists of the methods just described to give you some idea of the variety of approaches possible. I have interpreted some of them in a medium other than that which was used in the original work. This shows how any picture can be freely redrawn in a different medium which can give it a new, interesting effect, so don’t hesitate to copy masterpieces in different techniques for practice. Here we look at a still life by Diego Rivera, the revolutionary Mexican artist who painted many large murals in the 1930s and 1940s. This rather refined pencil drawing looks anything but revolutionary, with its carefully gradated tones, which give a strong effect of texture and dimension. The only thing that tells us it is a 20th-century drawing is the rather naïve wobble to the decanter and the simplicity of the folds of the cloth. Apart from that it has a timeless elegance. I did this drawing with a 6B pencil on cartridge paper.

This piece of drapery is after a Leonardo da Vinci study. Rendered in a painstaking ink technique of hatched lines, it is a very classically inspired piece of work. A fine pen nib lends itself very well to this sort of drawing, although there were at least two grades of nib size used here in order to obtain this effect.

Matisse’s still life in front of a window with an Egyptian curtain is rendered in brush and wash technique which is kept very simple to suit the style favoured by Matisse. The solid tones and the pattering of the shapes is a favourite device with this artist, but requires great discrimination in exactly how the complex original should be simplified.

This much more traditional Renaissance-type drawing, after a painting by Severin Roesen executed in 1870, is a graded wash of tone inside carefully drawn pencil outlines, and requires a great deal of control of your materials and tools. Try it out, but don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t always work. It takes a bit of time to get the precision needed in handling the brushes and pigment. To make it easier, use a good, thick watercolour paper. The tonal wash will diffuse better and be easier to control.

A chalk drawing like this one after Henri Rousseau (Vase of Flowers, 1900) can be very powerful and decorative at the same time. The simplicity of the repetition of shapes and tonal patterns make this an almost folk art kind of picture, and the intensity of the chalk on the tinted paper provides a powerful impact, heightened by its simplicity.

Henri Fantin-Latour’s painting Still Life of Fruit, Flowers and Wine translates very well to the medium of chalk because its very subtlety of texture makes it ideal for the mysterious quality of Fantin-Latour’s pictures. This has been drawn very lightly and delicately on a heavy watercolour paper, which helps to break up the surface of the chalk strokes. Do not forget to fix chalk when you have finished your work.

A mixed media picture based on Van Gogh’s still life of Gauguin’s chair with books and a candle in a gaslit room with a patterned carpet. Some mid-tone paper was torn and cut and stuck down on the watercolour paper and on light-toned paper. Then inky washes were drawn over it with a brush to reinforce the shapes of the chair, and a fibre pen was used to draw in some of the more detailed parts. Chalk was then used over this to create more texture and a slightly gritty line effect where there are highlights.

A similar still life based on a Cézanne picture was done rather more finely in pen line, chalk texture and washes brushed across some areas. In some places the chalk is on top of the wash and in others the wash is over the chalk.

Playing with Still Life T HIS SECTION DEALS WITH THE BUSINESS OF trying out compositions and arrangements of still-life objects without necessarily drawing them at once. The idea is to turn the still life into a game of possibilities and hope that you will come up with something that intrigues you visually and compositionally. It is easy enough to throw together a group of objects with little concern as to their aesthetic possibilities or the emotional response they evoke. However, once you become interested in producing really good compositions, you will have to experiment with different objects and arrangements. The way to get the hang of composition is to do things such as clustering large amounts of similar objects together so that they begin to define the space that they occupy with some force. Repetition of shapes is a very

traditional way to produce a powerful combination of form in space. Another way is to line them up like a military parade, but looking carefully at how they are lit. Morandi was a great believer in this method, although his objects were not always of a similar shape. An opposite approach is to create a large space such as a table-top with just one object centred in the picture to help define the space. This usually means that the object you choose should be picked for some significant thing about it, either in its shape or its materials. Pinning up a large number of flat items such as letters, photographs and pamphlets on an obviously flat surface can create great opportunities for trompe-l’oeil drawing, where the shallow relief of the object can be emphasized by careful modelling which can begin to cheat the eye into believing that these things exist as real objects. This does take skill to do, though. Taking a working environment and just portraying the normal arrangement of tools, gadgets and other paraphernalia of the job can create quite a strong, austere effect of work in progress. Choosing larger objects such as pieces of furniture and putting several of them together in a small space can be very interesting for defining the significant negative space between them very clearly. This does make us look at quite ordinary objects anew. Everyday objects of a small size – things that can be easily held in the hand – drawn with great definition and to a scale much larger than their normal size, provide a great way to see familiar objects in a new light. Treated in this manner, they can become quite compelling. A theme where you try to show a variety of different textures in one picture, demonstrating your skills, is quite amusing and creates an intriguing puzzle for the onlooker to decipher. Similarly, taking the five senses and drawing up images which suggest each one has a sort of elemental power and logic about it and helps to create unusual compositions. MORE OR LESS? Here we take similar objects and look at them in different ways. They can be lined up à la Morandi, making a neat, closely grouped picture, or multiplied

en masse, creating a crowd of objects without limit. Alternatively, we can get rid of everything except one perfect specimen and set it in a big empty space so that it becomes the focal point. In this line-up of pots of different types and materials, all are centred on a circular base. Lined up with the light behind them, they present an attractive group with a formal balance. The placing of the brilliantly reflective pot in the front is rather like putting the king in front of his troops.

This composition was arrived at by gathering together most of the vases, jugs, large bowls and other pots from our kitchen, sitting room, hall and garden and pushing them together, large at the back, small at the front, all across the floor. The repetition of these mostly open-ended shapes seen in perspective creates an intriguing picture. One 20th-century English artist produced a composition of 100 jugs – something of a challenge to tackle.

Taking a single object like this golden jug and placing it on a bare, simple table with a blank wall behind it pulls the eye into the picture to concentrate on the lone object. For maximum effect, choose a really strong, unusual object. SHALLOW OR DEEP?

The pinboard with various paper articles pinned and wedged onto it gives a very good display if you want to try out your hand at a little trompe l’oeil. Making sure the objects don’t have much real depth helps here, because whatever amount of dimension you manage to get into it pays off quite strongly.

A large table-top laden with miscellaneous objects can be intriguing, especially if they are objects that are not familiar in that context. A lot of old pictures of still life were done like this, but usually with a precise theme. This drawing is just of what happened to be there. ORDERLY DISORDER

These chairs of various shapes and materials scattered across the wooden floor in no apparent order make interesting visual spaces in between their forms. Large objects always force you to look again at your efforts to compose well.

The large cloths, both plain and patterned, draped over some pieces of furniture and anchored by a lamp and biscuit tin, create an interesting artificial landscape of folds and wrinkles. These were very pleasing to draw, albeit challenging. USING WHAT’S AROUND

The various pictures that the British artist Rodrigo Moynihan painted of his working environment are cleverly composed and handled with powerful simplicity. Have a go at creating some compositions from your own working space. SMALL TO LARGE

Small hand-held objects such as keys, bulbs, gaming pieces, matchboxes and assorted implements are always good for still-life subjects, but look better the larger you draw them. This makes you learn quite a bit about scale and is great fun to do. Try a drawing pin or paper clip drawn about 30 cm (12 in) in size.

TACTILE QUALITIES: THE SENSES Taking a group of objects each of which is made from a different material is a time-honoured way for a still-life artist to show his skill in depicting the texture of things. Here we have glass, pottery, flowers, wood, metal, fruit and cloth, all of which need to be drawn differently in order to bring out their texture.

In this composition of a warm drink, a sugar bowl, a glass of wine, some olives, some oranges and a nice rich-looking cake, all the items refer to taste. A vase of lilies, which have a strong scent, and a bottle of perfume put across the idea of smell.

Here there is a group of objects such as a lamp, a camera, a pair of binoculars, a book, a magnifying glass and spectacles, all of which are referring to sight.

Taking a theme of the five senses allows us to try to show something that everyone experiences through the medium of drawing. The drawing above refers to touch, showing silk, pearls, water and fur, all of which have great tactile values. Finally, a group of musical instruments puts across the idea of sound and hearing – a classical subject.

Unusual Arrangements I N THIS SECTION WE CONSIDER SOME UNUSUAL STILL-life ideas which innovative artists over the centuries have experimented with, and developed. Of course, what is at first very unusual often becomes acceptable, even fashionable, and finally very familiar to most people. The ancient civilizations often seem to have produced still-life arrangements in their paintings, which were mostly wall decorations. The Athenians knew of pictures by Phidias which were reputed to look so real that people tried to pick up the objects. On the walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum there are some beautiful pieces which survived the horrendous events that overtook those cities. There are many historians who believe that

the best painters in Southern Italy were also Greeks. The Romans certainly learnt their skills from them. In this section you will find an example from Italy of the genre I call “menu” pictures. In the main dining room at the 15th-century Medici Villa at Poggio a Caiano in Tuscany, Italy, the walls are covered with large paintings of the produce of the estate, such as various types of grapes, pears, lemons and so forth. This sort of still life was commissioned for the particular purpose of satisfying the desire of aristocratic landowners to be surrounded by representations of the bounty of their estates while they enjoyed it at their tables. Here the intention was to illustrate food at its most tempting, something that was echoed centuries later in the commercial world of advertising. In its early days, it gave rise to a whole area of representation of products that was called “commercial still life” in the art schools at the time. These slick, well- drawn pictures of products decorated packaging, posters and press advertisements, a genre that was replaced by the use of photography instead. At the opposite end of the scale of realism were the still lifes produced by the Surrealists. They painted pictures of objects in distinctly odd situations, juxtapositions and forms. Our example is by Salvador Dali, the most famous representative of this school of art, and shows one of his most well-known works. After the Second World War, the artists’ movement called the Kitchen Sink School concentrated on looking at the ordinary, messy nitty-gritty of life’s activity which until that time had largely been ignored. This genre gives scope for every artist, for even the lavatory in a domestic bathroom can become a legitimate subject for a still life. You don’t always need to find an unusual subject, or handle a familiar one in an unusual way; sometimes just the framing of a picture can produce an unexpected effect. Even though still lifes have a long history, there are still many ways to break new ground. PICTURES WITH A PURPOSE This still life can be seen at the Medici Villa at Poggio a Caiano in Tuscany and is one of many that were painted for the powerful Medici family to

depict the bounty from their own estates. Here there are about twenty paintings on the dining-room walls that catalogue every type of fruit, vegetable and animal that was produced from the estate – a sort of menu of the raw materials of what your dinner would be. My drawing is taken from about 30 varieties of lemons shown on a latticework of leaves, each group of two or three being a different variety. It almost looks like late Victorian wallpaper, except that every piece of fruit is carefully observed from nature. This is a really enormous still life piece.

This is a commercial still life taken from a 1930s advertising campaign designed to boost the consumption of spaghetti. During this part of the 20th century there was much still life drawing of this kind being produced, some of it demonstrating quite a high level of artistic skill.

These eggs and pots are from one of the earliest pieces of still life extant – a fresco painting from the walls of Pompeii, which was preserved to the present day by the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which buried it in lava and ash.

Here is something distinctly odd: a Surrealist still life that is also partly a landscape. Although the objects are from everyday life they are given a new twist by the fact that they seem to be soft and melting instead of hard and rigid. Salvador Dali’s melting watches are famous and it is quite a feat to be able to paint such things in a way that makes them still recognizable while changing their shape so dramatically. RECORDING THE EVERYDAY The 1950s movement in British painting called the Kitchen Sink School (an equivalent of the American Ash Can School), believed that too much of the painting of the time harked back to the subject matter of the Impressionists or post-Impressionists and decided that everyday images of life in its gritty, mundane reality would be their concern.

I thought that the everyday could be an unusual and interesting area for still life, so I looked around my own immediate surroundings and started drawing the top of the cooker with a pot of metal cooking utensils on one side and a jug of wooden spoons and assorted implements on the other. The unromantic view of the top of the cooker with its knobs and gas rings and the extractor fan overhead completes this unvarnished still life of the centre of kitchen activity.

Then I went to the bathroom and took as subjects the rack where the soap and shampoo bottles are kept with a couple of flannels hanging below. The point of this exercise is not to be too sensitive about how you portray this subject; just draw it as it appears to you from the most obvious